Revision 03 · Withdrawn
Originality distance is withdrawn
Was
Originality distance: distance from category convention, and from our own last 12 months.
Now
Withdrawn. It breaks Principle One.
What changed
Originality distance was row three of Annex A, offered as the Human Ledger’s answer to content output volume. It is now struck through. It stays on the table, visibly, with a link to this note.
Why
When Part I was published I said two of the metrics break Principle One: they are merit judgements wearing a number’s clothing, and somebody has to decide what counts as original. I left them in to find out whether they could be rescued.
This one can’t. Any version of originality distance needs a reference point for what “original” means, and whoever sets that reference point is deciding what good work looks like. That is the ministry of taste Principle One exists to prevent.
A standard that hides its retractions is not a standard. So the row stays, struck through, with the date and the reason.
Where it shows
The list
The ledger is a working spec, not a manifesto.
Get new principles, revisions and the arguments that killed them, roughly once a month and never more often.